Farage Faces Questions Over Who Funded £885,000 Clacton Constituency Home
The title of this post, is the same as that as this article on the BBC.
This is the sub-heading.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage faces pressure to account for how his partner paid for a £885,000 home after a BBC investigation raised further questions about his previous explanation.
These two introductory paragraphs, give more details.
The Clacton MP has denied avoiding more than £44,000 in additional stamp duty on the purchase of the constituency home by putting it in his partner Laure Ferrari’s name, saying that she bought it with her own funds.
He suggested that she was able to afford to buy the four-bedroom home, which was bought without a mortgage, because she comes from a wealthy French family.
The BBC appears to have fully investigated the deal and doubt the veracity of some of the tale, that Farage told.
I notice, that the house in question is in Frinton.
My late wife was a barrister and once acted for the Co-op to get an off-licence in the town.
- Up until this action the town had been dry.
- C told me, that the Co-op had appointed a charming Asian gentleman as a manager.
- She used all her legal charm to get the action through.
- She also joked afterwards about hate mail, but I don’t think it was serious.
It appears that you can still buy alcohol in Frinton.
A Walk Between Walton-on-the-Naze And Finton-on-Sea Stations
One of the reason’s I went to Walton-on-the-Naze station today, was to see if I could have a nice walk in the sun along the sea to Frinton-on-Sea station and then take the train home.
This Google Map shows the two stations and the sea.
A Walk Between Walton And Frinton Stations
Walton-on-the-Naze station is in the North-East corner of the map by Walton Pier and Frinton-on-Sea station is in the South-West corner.
I walked along the promenade, which goes all the way to Clacton-on-Sea, between the beach-huts on the shore and the wide sandy beach and the sea.
I took these pictures as I walked.
Note.
- The number of Thames Sailing Barges in the sea. I saw five, but others saw six.
- The beach welcomes dogs.
- The memorial to PC Brian Bishop.
- I got lost walking from the beach to Frinton-on-Sea station. There were no signs or maps.
The walk took me about ninety minutes. Unlike at Clacton, I didn’t pass a decent cafe. I should have had lunch before I left Walton.
Only In Frinton
A common target of East Anglian humour is Frinton, as over the years the town has acquired a dubious reputation about being anti-fun.
In The First Off Licence In Frinton, I told the story of how C got the town its first Off Licence. Her version of the tale, always ended with Frinton were not amused.
Rumour has it, for years, the sign on Manningtree station, which said something like Harwich For The Continent had been annotated with And Frinton For The Incontinent.
Tonight I found this under Recent Developments in the Wikipedia entry for The Sunshine Coast Line, which is the branch line that serves Clacton and Frinton.
A £104 million engineering project known as the Colchester to Clacton Resignalling Project took place on the line between December 2006 and July 2009. Life-expired signalling equipment was replaced and a new control system was installed; 170 modern LED signals were installed and eight manual level crossings were upgraded to full barrier crossings with security cameras. The line was closed every weekend and on public holidays, with bus replacement services provided.
There was opposition from the town of Frinton to keep the manual gates, which were reportedly removed “under cover of darkness”. Folklore has it that townspeople used to lock the gates to keep out coach-loads of tourists.
It is a typical Frinton story. I have no idea, if it’s true!
The First Off Licence In Frinton
Frinton had a reputation that it was a town, where the buying of alcohol was difficult and there were no pubs or shops selling the demon drink.
In the early 1980s, C was a pupil barrister in Ipswich and she was asked to do a case, where normally barristers would not be required.
She was asked to do an off-licence application for the Co-op, who were opening a small supermarket in the town. They thought that they wouldn’t get the licence, so that had approached her Chambers for some heavy weaponry to do the necessary.
When she met the man, who would actually hold the licence, she knew it would be a forgone conclusion.
He was a charming man, of Asian origin, who had been chosen well by the Co-op to knock down the barriers in the oh-so-genteel town of Frinton.
Whether she played the race card in Court, I do not know, but from fellow lawyers, who’d faced her in various cases, I know she had a subtle skill with words, that told those that matter, what she would do if she lost.
That was the last she ever heard of the case after the application for an off licence was approved.
The Anonymous Widower 